


Just A Maid

by oonaseckar



Category: Feel Good - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Regency, Cross-Posted on Wattpad, F/F, F/M, Gen, Georgette Heyer - Freeform, Maids, Servants
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:29:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23243296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oonaseckar/pseuds/oonaseckar
Summary: The Honourable Miss Georgina Buddle faces the most important day of her life, coming out into Society.  Her faithful lady's maid Mae will probably be helpful.  If she isn't too busy stealing the cooking sherry, 'borrowing' laudanum and crushing on her mistress.As a lady's maid, she's an odd duck.  And a hopeless romantic.  And now Lady George is getting married...
Relationships: George/Hugh, Mae Martin/George
Kudos: 6





	Just A Maid

**Author's Note:**

> Well, _someone_ gotta write a Feel Good Regency, right?
> 
> Chapter title is Georgette Heyer.
> 
> Cross-posted as gothicmork on Wattpad.

The greatest day of a young lady's life might be her presentation at court. Many would say so. Of course some would disagree, and claim it to be the first time she receives the shy proposals of a young man approved by her family. Still others would opine that perhaps it is rightly accounted the day she gives her husband his firstborn son, laid in her arms by the midwife and rendering all the toil and suffering beforehand well worth the candle, indeed.

But to quite a few minds – and certainly to half the minds belonging to the nimble fingers and strong peasant arms that are busy tightening laces, arranging ringlets and adding a last stitch or two, here in the dressing room occupied for the Season by Miss Georgina Buddle, senior offshoot of the Shropshire Buddles – there's no question about it, and only one possible occasion that qualifies as the foremost for any female of quality. It is today, this day: her wedding day. And perhaps Miss Buddle would agree, if she weren't so infernally busy, as are all her helpers, well-wishers, lady's maids and relatives.

“Oh, for Heaven's sake!” cries out her step-mother, Lady Linda Rickett-Hill, her _de facto_ guardian and sponsor for this, Lady Buddle's first and only Season in the midst of the Ton and the blue-bloods of high society. “Girl, hand me that here, you're doing it all wrong!” And she seizes a handful of delicate magnolia ribbons out of the hands of Mae, Miss Buddle's lady's maid, and begins to dress Georgina's hair herself, doing a very creditable job of it.

Not that it seems to greatly allay the young lady's anxiety. She still sits in her white gilt and velveteen chair before the dressing table, looking with a twisted mouth into the mirror, as her aunt finishes off her bridal finery with the most roccoco hairstyle in all of creation, a froth of ribbons and curls. “Dear Ma'am,” she winces, almost daring to put one finger to her head, before her step-mother lightly whisks it away as if it were a bird trying to land, and she obediently replaces it with the other in her lap, twisting them together anxiously. But she does dare to continue, and adds, “Do you think we will have my trousseau complete in a timely manner?” She's not normally a notably timid young woman, but she can hear the slight wobble in her voice as she asks it. There have been a few nightmares disturbing her dreams of late, and every one of them has included being late enough for her own imminent wedding that the impatient and disgruntled groom, despairing of her ever arriving, simply decides to call the whole thing off and takes off for the country with his cronies, and a honeymoon spent in her absence and unwed, hunting, fishing, shooting and drinking with not a care in the world.

“Oh, do stop flapping, dear,” says the detached voice of Miss Maggie from her prime seat in the corner of the room. She doesn't put overmuch venom into her abjuration, but then she's otherwise occupied – bent over a book as usual. Even at such a moment as this, Miss Maggie has better things to do than to fret about foolish fripperies such as dresses, hairstyles and all manner of feminine adornments. Not that she has not been a great help: Miss Georgina's old governess, pressed into service now as a paid companion and chaperone, though with the greatest reluctance and distaste for London and the Season. Pensioned off and comfortably placed, she agreed to the scheme more out of old affection for her favourite pupil, rather than pressing need or penury, and the rest of the household, including Lady Linda, are mindful of it when requesting her to attend to duties and perform a servant's role.

Now, she reluctantly lifts her head from one of Aristophanes' later comedies – in the original Greek, of course – and directs her attention to her charge. “Is it the nightmares you're thinking of, my love?” she asks, and there's a note of real concern in her voice.

“Oh, the silliness of it, have you been having more of those, George?” her step-mother asks. She flips a ribbon the other way around, rearranges a curl on Georgina's forehead, and then steps back to examine her handiwork. Mae, the maid, hands her a hand-mirror, and she shows Georgina the view of the back of her head. It is all utter perfection, in the most painstaking way possible. It is perfect, for her perfect day, her perfect wedding.

“I wouldn't worry about it, Miss,” Mae says kindly, as she presses Georgina's veil at the edge of the dressing room, the final touch that will make her ready, ready or not. “I'm sure that Mr Hugh would never decide he'd waited too long for you. Why, after all, haven't the pair of you been friends since you were children together? He's waited all this time – it's only half an hour extra. I'll lay odds he can manage that.”

“Wise words, young Mae,” Lady Linda agreed. “You are a very present support in this stressful time.” And Mae blushed a bit, at her employer's words of praise, and even dropped the sketch of a curtsey. But probably half of Lady Linda's words were directed as a barb of invidious comparison, intended to wound another subject. The more likely, as she added to her encomium the subsequent exclamation, “Phillip! You lazy, lazy creature, are you asleep? For the Lord's sake, my boy, this is your cousin's wedding day, and with any luck we'll all be in the carriage to the church within the next quarter-hour! Bestir yourself, I tell you! Heavens, my lad, are you even ready?”

it might be accounted a fair question, as a blinking, gummy-eyed figure rose up from where it had been curled up on the daybed by the window, and straightened up, swinging its legs over the side of the crochet-blanket swathed bed. It proved to be a slim, lanky, bearded fellow, of about twenty-four years old, dressed in perfectly unexceptionable, if not perfectly fitting, Court breeches, his undressed hair suggesting one more used to the hunting field than the ballroom, blinking and rubbing his eyes as he cast a mean look his aunt's way.

“I only need my slippers on, Aunt,” he replied, with some asperity. “And there's nothing for me to do, here. Mae wouldn't let me help with the tonging, and I'm no good with a needle for the last-minute adjustments, you know. What's a fellow to do? Now if you'd asked me to train the hounds to howl the Wedding March, we'd have been set right and fair. I only shut my eyes for a moment: and now I'll be fresh for the ceremony.”

“Well, that's a fair point,” his aunt conceded, more intent upon pinching and settling the delicate veil, as Georgina wordlessly leant into it, feeling the cool brush of the lovingly embroidered hand-tatting over her face, a family heirloom carefully restored for this occasion. “After all, when it comes to the feminine arts we all know quite well that you're neither use nor ornament.”


End file.
